Don Quixote (1957)

January 21, 1961

Screen: 'Don Quixote':Russian Film Opens at Two Theatres

By BOSLEY CROWTHER

Published: January 21, 1961

IT is truly odd and ironic that the most handsome and impressive film yet made from Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote" is the brilliant Russian spectacle, done in wide screen and color, which opened yesterday at the Fifty-fifth Street and Sixty-eighth Street Playhouses.

More than a beautiful visualization of the illustrious adventures and escapades of the tragi-comic knight-errant and his squire, Sancho Panza, in seventeenth-century Spain, this inevitably abbreviated rendering of the classic satire on chivalry is an affectingly warm and human exposition of character.

Nikolai Cherkasov, the Russian actor who has played such heroic roles as Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible, performs the lanky Don Quixote, and does so with a simple dignity that bridges the inner nobility and the surface absurdity of this poignant man.

His addle-brained knight-errant, self-appointed to the ridiculous position in an age when armor had already been relegated to museums and the chivalrous code of knight-errantry had become a joke, is, as Cervantes no doubt intended, a gaunt but gracious symbol of good, moving soberly and sincerely in a world of cynics, hypocrites and rogues.

Cherkasov does not caricature him, as some actors have been inclined to do. He treats this deep-eyed, bearded, bony crackpot with tangible affection and respect. Directed by Grigory Kozintsev in a tempo that is studiously slow, he develops a sense of a high tradition shining brightly and passing gravely through an impious world.

The complexities of communication have been considerably abetted in this case by appropriately stilted English language that has been excellently dubbed in place of the Russian dialogue. The voices of all the characters, including that of Cherkasov, have richness, roughness or color to conform with the personalities. And the subtleties of the dialogue are most helpfully conveyed. Since Russian was being spoken instead of Spanish, there is no violation of artistry or logic here.

Splendid, too, is the performance of Yuri Tolubeyev, one of Russia's leading comedians, as Sancho Panza, the fat, grotesque "squire." Though his character is broader and more comically rounded than the don, he gives it a firmness and toughness—a sort of peasant dignity—too. It is really as though the Russians have been in this character the oftentimes underlying vitality and courage of supposed buffoons.

The episode in which Sancho Panza concludes the joke that is played on him when he is facetiously put in command of an "island" is one of the best in the film.

True, the pattern and flow of the drama have strong literary qualities that are a bit wearisome in the first half, before Don Quixote goes to the duke's court. But strength and poignancy develop thenceforth, and the windmill and deathbed episodes gather the threads of realization of the wonderfulness of the old boy.

There are other good representations of peasants and people of the court by actors who are finely costumed and magnificently photographed in this last of the Russian films to reach this country in the program of joint cultural exchange.

Also on the bill at the Fifty-fifth Street is a nice ten-minute color film called "Sunday in Greenwich Village," a tour of the haunts and joints.